Project - Getting a Ninja Turtles GameBoy game onto a Sega Game Gear cartridge for play on Game Gear.

Ok guys,

As my first blog, I'm sharing with you a project that I've just started working on. I'll probably also create reviews of favorite games and have various other topics that I list as well. Let's get to it.

I have had my Sega Game Gear now for about 27 years. I loved it when I was a kid and took mine everywhere with me. That said, I had one gripe about my favorite Sega system in that there was never a Ninja Turtles game on it. Meanwhile there were three TMNT games on the original GameBoy. That got me to thinking that perhaps there is now a way to get a GameBoy game onto a Sega Game Gear cartridge for play on the Game Gear. I've seen all sorts of varient cartridges such as multicarts (even on GameBoy and Game Gear), emulators for GBA playing NES or even Game Gear games from a GBA cart, and then of course the crazy amounts of cartridge modding ranging across all cartridge based systems. We even have amazing Raspberry Pi systems that can hold well over 10,000 games on a device that fits in the palm of your hand.

So far, I've researched enough that I've seen there is a cartridge called the EverDrive across most cartridge based systems including Game Gear. I did some digging and apparently that is a dead end for me as the Game Gear's EverDrive is built to only run Game Gear and Master System games on it. If I'm doing that, I'm going to simply get the actual real cartridges for my collection. It's also really expensive costing $77 just for the cart board without the outter casing. The site that I found has all the parts needed to get it running but it would be around $100 USD for the final product without shipping costs and it wouldn't do what I wanted in the first place. Thus, a dead end.

Even if I find a way to get the GameBoy rom working the way I'm intending it too, there's a good possibility that the game wouldn't be in color. I'm not sure if every GameBoy game was auto colored on GameBoy Color meaning the color was already in the game code but the original GameBoy couldn't process it, or if there was a code within the GameBoy Color that did the coloring process. If the first idea is correct, then there is a chance that it would show up as colored on Game Gear. I would prefer color obviously, but I wouldn't mind horribly if it was still the traditional GameBoy colors. The next issue is the screen size. The Game Gear had a wider screen than the GameBoy so there are two possibilities for this; again if I can even get this working. The first is that the game would auto stretch to fill the Game Gear's screen and it would distort the picture slightly. The second is that the game wouldn't stretch but would be smaller and centered having unused screen area around the gameplay. This doesn't really negatively affect my fun factor.

So why go through all the trouble of attempting this when I can play these outdated Ninja Turtles games on just about any other device? It's because I simply want a Ninja Turtles game on my Sega Game Gear. I've wanted to be shell shocked on my favorite handheld since I first got it. I've even created the box art for the would be game on my preferred system (see below). I can't take credit for the screen shots on the back. I've simply put all the pieces together. The colorized screens are from someone elses project showing what the game would look like on the GameBoy Color. The top one is from one of the NES games. The box art I created simply gives fans an idea of what the game would have looked like on the Sega Game Gear and it looks glorious.

I will continue to research and see what is possible. If you have any insights please share. I've posted part of this on the Help forums here on www.segaage.com.... I will keep you guys updated.